


Attempt 472

by soupytwist



Category: The Good Place (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-14 11:03:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13006422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupytwist/pseuds/soupytwist
Summary: Some of Michael's reboots work better than others.





	Attempt 472

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vibishan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vibishan/gifts).



> All love to the usual suspects! Extra thanks to K for help with puns over coffee, and to C for cheerleading above and beyond the call of duty.

“What do you mean, I've got two soulmates?” Eleanor demands. “Isn't the whole deal with soulmates that you only get one?”

“Ah, not always,” says Michael, beaming munificently. “Sometimes two – or even more! - are so well matched to you that the system decides it can't split you up. And then – tah-dah!” Michael does jazz hands. “This is Chidi, and this is Tahani.” 

Eleanor eyes her apparent soulmates. Surprisingly Hot Professor looks embarrassed; Socialite Princess Jasmine looks... intrigued. Eleanor makes a mental note to remember not to call them that. She smiles, instead. She woke up dead: the least she can do is put some effort in.

“Nothing against either of you – I'm into it, oh _man_ – but it's a bit weird, right? I don't know who to hug first!”

Tahani then initiates a slightly awkward hug-a-thon, which ends with the three of them in some sort of weird group hug that seems to involve about six extra arms. Eleanor hasn't been in a group hug since high school, and even that was a stunt with the football team which, sadly, _totally_ failed to get her the extra grade points she'd been hoping for.

“But is it not rather surprising to have multiple soulmates?” asks Tahani, sitting down. The rest sit, lean, or in Eleanor's case pace, rather less glamorously. “I must say, I always thought, back on Earth, that that sort of thing was at the least considered a little” - she drops her voice in a way that makes Eleanor expect the word 'porn' - “ _risqué?_ ” Tahani takes a second to consider, then adds, “And do you think it makes me 'edgy'? I was once described as post-indie by Celebrity Medical Treatments magazine, but I've never been _edgy_.”

“Definitely,” says Eleanor. Tahani's face does a thing Eleanor really hopes is not Tahani's attempt at edgy.

“Michael, are you sure about this?” Chidi asks. 

Michael looks slightly wounded. “Of course I am!” He holds up a printout, which features their names and a chart made up of heart symbols. Apparently the afterlife is truly a place of advanced science.

“If we're all soulmates, why is Eleanor living in her quaint little abode, instead of here in the mansion with Chidi and I?” 

“That's a really good question, Tahani.” says Eleanor. She turns.“Why _am_ I living in the house of clowns and not in this beautiful mansion?” The mansion is sweet. Eleanor has lived in 3-bed apartments, like, significantly smaller than the _bathroom_ here.

“Honestly, I'm not sure,” says Michael. “Sometimes the ways of the afterlife are kinda-” He makes a wibbly-wobbly hand gesture.

_You're kinda_ , Eleanor thinks. She tries to stuff her hand in her pocket to prevent herself from imitating the wibbly-wobbly hand gesture, but the sun dress she's wearing has pockets that are just a bit too small to let her. She hides a grimace behind a smile at her new soulmates, who at least seem pretty easy to smile at.

“What did you guys do when you were, y'know, alive?” she asks.

“Well I raised billions for charity,” says Tahani. “But I think my real legacy was the joy I inspired in others.”

“I was a professor of ethics,” says Chidi. He screws up his forehead in a way that makes Eleanor want to smooth it out for him. “And on that level, I really don't know what I think right now.”

“It's the afterlife, dude, aren't you supposed to be able to _stop_ thinking at this point?” Eleanor hopes she's being encouraging; Chidi looks like she just told him he left his oven on. Oh jeez, she really is apparently soulmates with a nerd. Even if he's a hot nerd.

Michael beams at them. He elbows Chidi in the ribs; Eleanor is suddenly reminded that Michael really isn't human. “I hope you're all going to the party tonight!”

“Of course we are!” trills Tahani. 

Michael is still far too cheerful and it's freaking Eleanor out, just a bit. Nobody should know, let alone smile, that much! She turns her trusty You Should Buy This Unlicensed Nutritional Supplement face on him. “Of course we will. We wouldn't miss it, would we, guys? But first, could you maybe let us have a few minutes? Just for a chat? Soulmate to soulmate.....s?”

Michael backs towards the doors a bit, and Eleanor feels a moment of vindication. Dead, but still got it. She smiles again. “Thanks, you're _so_ understanding.” 

She shuts the door, and turns. Right.

“Okay, so you're my soulmates, right? And you'd never, ever betray me – for _any_ reason – right?”

“Uh... yes?”

“Tahani?” Eleanor makes her best I Help Little Old Ladies Across The Street face.

“Well... I suppose.”

Eleanor sits down opposite the two of them, looks across the coffee table, and decides she's got to go for it. “Then I've got something to tell you.”

\--

The party _suuuuuuuuucks_. Eleanor is on her third shrimp and fourth drink, but Tahani and Chidi are starting to kinda harsh her buzz, what with looking beautiful and put together and totally like they belong in the land of perfect people. She stares longingly at the shrimp, downs another glass of champagne, and chooses to ignore the way the guy with the drinks tray is totally giving her the eye. There are balloons everywhere, for crying out loud. Anyone would need a drink to deal with that.

The room is also huge, and full of guests. Eleanor recognises some of them from the induction thing earlier. So: these are her new neighbours in the afterlife. They mostly look like they could do with a wardrobe upgrade.

A guy walks past wearing an outfit that makes him look a bit like one of those performing monkeys from old school fairgrounds. Eleanor revises her assessment to ' _desperately_ needs a wardrobe upgrade'.

“Isn't this fun?” says Tahani, beaming. “The crowd isn't as big as the one for my _infamous_ New Year gala in Bali, of course, but not too shabby!” She smooths an invisible crease from her blue and gold dress. Tahani is definitely one of the few who needs no help there, at least.

“Hello, everyone!” Michael swoops in – he's got what looks like a microphone, only it's pink. The incredibly phallic result makes Eleanor want to shriek. “Tonight is a very special night! Tonight we celebrate... love!”

“Oh no,” says someone, and Eleanor isn't sure if it's her, Tahani, or Chidi speaking.

“You're all here because you were, in your own unique ways, _better_ at love than other people.”

“My stomach hurts,” mutters someone. Definitely Chidi.

“Love is, in many ways, about about _being_ better than other people-”

Chidi makes some sort of incoherent noise. Eleanor tunes out. By the time Michael has said the word “love” eighty-five times, Eleanor has drunk four more glasses of champagne, plus two shots belonging to people who were obviously just too slow to deserve them, and still hasn't gotten enough shrimp. She glares at the retreating back of the server, who may now be a little afraid of her. 

She takes three only kinda lurching steps in the server's direction, ends up behind a pillar, and walks into a monk. An actual, like, Tibetan monk. 

“Hey, you live downstairs! With the clown pictures!”

“...I guess I do?” Eleanor blinks a lot. She's pretty sure Tibetan monks don't talk like deadbeats from Florida. She has a drunken sense that somehow she even knows this particular monk shouldn't be talking at all.

“Yeah! Those clown pictures! Okay, they sort of freaked me out at first because they reminded me of the time my cousin Barry? Who owns a joke shop in St Augustine? He put a rubber mask on his dog Chico and it ran around barking at me and I thought Chico had turned _into_ a clown, for like three days? Only he hadn't!”

“Okay?” Eleanor is way too smashed for this conversation.

“I was gonna put him in my dance crew.” The monk is a sad monk. Eleanor pats him on the hand. He pets hers back. “I'm sorry. I just really wanted to talk to someone. I'm not supposed to be here.” 

Eleanor raises her glass, downs it. “Me neither, dude. Me neither.” 

“I want to go home,” he says. “Only I think the meth lab next door maybe blew up? Cause that guy said I was dead.” His face sort of scrunches up. “I don't think I wanna be dead. Only I don't think I can do anything about it.”

“Me neither,” says Eleanor. “And I lost my soulmates.” The monk guy has somehow found pizza. Eleanor wants pizza. She wobbles a bit closer and half-slides, half-leans on the pillar. The monk guy offers her a slice. 

“Aww, that's sad. My soulmate's over there somewhere, I think? But she's scary. She doesn't even know my name's Jason, and not in the good way like my friend Ed whose girlfriend calls him Big Daddy.”

“Too bad, dude,” Eleanor says, through a mouthful of pizza. “Mine are...” She tries to come up with something. “Good people? Goooooooood people. Who should _totally_ fork like bunnies.” She considers this for a second. “ _Lots_ of forking like bunnies.”

“Bunnies!” says Jason the monk guy. Eleanor slides further down the pillar and passes out face first into the remains of the pizza.

–

Eleanor had half expected to wake up somewhere familiar – her bed, her floor, her bathtub, the local 7-11 – and find out that her entire time in the Good Place had been a dream. What she _actually_ gets is bunnies.

Lots of bunnies.

The entire giant bed is covered in bunnies. Chidi has a bunny sitting on his head. Tahani is petting one, but apparently torn between thinking they're adorable and being freaked out. Eleanor realises that somehow Chidi and Tahani have taken her back to the mansion, not Creepy Clown Towers. 

“So, uh, did we-”

“No, we did not,” says Tahani, putting the bunny down, and then bringing over a cup of tea on a tray. Eleanor is impressed that she doesn't fall over any of the bunnies, even the one with those weird black rings around its eyes like it's auditioning for a bad bunny Goth band.

“Do you, like, get less British at any point?” asks Eleanor. “Just so I know.” Tahani is blushing a little, and it's ridiculously adorable.

“I couldn't possibly comment,” says Tahani, in the most cut-glass of tones.

“It's like bears and Popes and whether Chidi could get more nerdy,” Eleanor replied, drinking the tea, and they both grin. 

“Hey!” says Chidi, then sighs. “Fine. I resemble that remark.”

Which is when Eleanor looks out of the bedroom window and sees _giant_ bunnies. There are bunnies outside bigger than elephants, and her neighbours, all wearing identical bunny-patterned nightwear, are running away from them. Orange things are falling from the sky, and Eleanor only takes a second to realise they're carrots. 

Eleanor does not in fact hide her head under the pillows and pretend to be even more dead than she already is, but it's a close thing. Forking bunnies. She quickly checks under the covers. Pyjamas on, non-bunny themed. Can animal-print pyjamas be coincidental? 

Maybe she needs help.

“Guys...” she says.

_

“Janet?”

“Hello!” Janet pops into existence two feet behind Eleanor's left elbow, helpfully and precisely where Eleanor doesn't expect her. Eleanor does not jump and fall through the door of 6 Degrees Of Cheesy Bacon, the Good Place's number one cheese-flavoured bacon emporium, through sheer force of will.

“Janet, can you... tell us how our actions will play out over time? Like, what the consequences will be?”

Janet looks delighted. “That is a great question! I'm afraid I'm just a source of all knowledge. I can tell you about things that have happened, but my predictions about how your decisions will affect things would be guesses. Guesses by someone with the equivalent of the combined brainpower of all the humans who have ever existed, but guesses.”

“So you can't tell me if whether talking to Chidi and Tahani about, ugh, _feelings_ would be a good idea.”

“Of course it would.” Janet shakes her head. “That's an anti-brainer. That's what I've just come up with to describe something so self-evident that the usual term 'no-brainer' is insufficient!”

“But I don't want to – I mean, uh,” Eleanor clears her throat, “my soulmates have been really great, and I need to do something to repay them. Only I don't know what.”

Janet looks considering. “Have you tried thinking about what you're good at? Many human self-help books advise doing it. I don't really know why – I'm good at everything – but you may find it helpful!”

“....thanks, Janet.” 

“You're welcome!” 

Janet winks out of existence again.

Eleanor sits on the wall and stares balefully across the street at Bacon Robbins. She wonders idly why anyone even wants bacon flavoured ice-cream, as that's easier than the real problem. Things she's good at... there aren't that many. Watching Toddlers and Tiaras. Instagramming other people's coffee orders. Banging guys she met in bars. But she's determined: she's going to come up with something.

–

“Oh yeah, I have great ideas,” Eleanor mumbles into Chidi's elbow. Tahani's arm round her waist is warm and comfortable, and Eleanor has always been a post-coital snoozer. “I knew there was something I was good at.”

“You can say that again,” says Tahani. Eleanor reaches out and pets her hair, which is charmingly rumpled and soft, like, so soft it's got to be unnatural somehow.

“Please don't, I may never recover,” says Chidi. Eleanor makes a little _heh_ noise into his elbow and pets him, too, cause she can. And then strokes his chest: they might be done for now but dude is still _ripped_. “I'm already having a moral dilemma about what this says about my respect for you both as individuals and for women as a group-”

“I feel plenty respected, don't you, Tahani?”

“Mmm, that's one way of putting it,” says Tahani. 

There's some snickering, and also some kissing Chidi, and then some kissing Tahani because doing that in front of Chidi makes his eyes bug out. Then they all collapse back on the pillows. The bed is forking huge, and Eleanor loves it.

“I do feel kind of bad for Jason, though,” she says thoughtfully after a while. She pokes Chidi with a foot. “Pretty sure that's your fault, buster.”

“It does seem rather a shame that it's so difficult for him,” says Tahani. “Rather harsh. It's almost as though-”

“Do you think maybe-” says Chidi, almost at the same time.

Eleanor suddenly sits straight up. They all three stare at each other.

“Holy FORKING SHIRTBALLS!”


End file.
